THE HORRIBLE TRUTH ABOUT AMITYVILLE

***** A YOUNG DANIEL RUMANOS CHRONICLES MYSTERY *****

The popular hack-writer on allegedly “paranormal” topics, Rosellen Gillis, only briefly discusses the particular case of alleged haunting that is generally remembered as the “Amityville Horror” in her rather puerile and plagiarised paperback which she has audaciously (if not with intentional humour) entitled Encyclopaedia of Demons and Demonology. As to why Ms. Gillis would choose a certain John Zaffinski to write the book’s preface -- an individual known from his appearances on television as a collector of Ouija boards and other pseudo-occult brick-a-brack, and indeed believed to be secretly involved in Satanism and devil-worship -- it can only be laid down, as it were, to the rumours that she is herself a woman of rather loose morals.

The details of the Amityville case are indeed all too easily available to anyone wishing to research it, and so only a brief condensation of them is necessary. In the year 1975, the Lutz family -- George, Kathy, and their three children, moved into a large home in the town of Amityville, Long Island. They claimed that, less than a month later, they were forced to flee in terror from the house after experiencing numerous supernatural phenomena, including bleeding walls, “demonic” voices, and bizarre transformations of the family members.

Now, the Amityville case has since been rather notoriously and conclusively exposed as an absolute hoax, the only point of further controversy being the actual reason for the Lutzes having taken part in it. It seems that the defence attorney for a certain Mr. Butch DeFeo, a former resident of the Amityville house who had been accused of murdering his parents and younger siblings there, had concocted the haunted house tale in order to bolster his client’s claim of not being responsible for his actions. George and Kathy Lutz had agreed to it as they had found themselves unable to make the mortgage payments on the home, which was indeed quite above their means.

Imagine my surprise when, decades after these events, I received a call from the current residents of the Amityville house, a nice Arab-American family whose name will remain anonymous, swearing that their home was now definitely being rather vigorously haunted by undeniably true preternatural activity!

My name is RUMANOS -- DOCTOR DANIEL RUMANOS, Occult Investigator and Intergalactic Man of Mystery. Even though I have the physical appearance of a strikingly-handsome and well-cultured human gentleman, I am in fact far more. I do carry within my blood the superior genetic material of the mysterious Watchers of the Daemon-Star ALGOL, this extraterrestrial heritage granting me numerous powers and abilities far beyond those of the people of Earth. It has become my work -- some would say my Crusade -- to utilise my alien gifts in order to defend the vulnerable against the forces of “spiritual” darkness. So it was with the case I intend to detail here.

I accordingly travelled from my usual headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland to Long Island, New York and arrived at the infamous Amityville house. The family that had contacted me were away, staying with friends in Manhattan, but had sent copies of the house-keys to me via the post.

Darkness had just fallen as I arrived at the house, the gibbous moon shining its leprous light upon all, whilst the sound of gently-lapping waves could be heard from the lake behind the large, well-preserved house. I thought it best to have a look around the grounds before entering the dwelling, both to be thorough and to make certain that no one was about who could in any way hinder my investigation.

The only further noise on this cool, early-autumn evening was the song of crickets. I was glad, as I pulled up the collar of my trench-coat against the night air, of the fact that mosquitoes have no particular interest in my Algolitsh blood. Indeed, the venomous, blood-sucking insects would find my skin difficult to pierce, but the swarms of them I observed among the trees that evening would have indeed proved a nuisance had they made the attempt.

It was then, as I mused on these and other topics whilst walking around the shadowy grounds of the Amityville house, that I began to perceive something indeed hideously unpleasant. It was an odour, a mephitic and unpleasantly-malodorous stink that would immediately make one think of some horrid creature from the darkest and dankest depths of condemnation.

The disgusting odour grew stronger as I advanced and then, suddenly, after walking cautiously around a large, gnarled tree, I saw what had to be its source. It was the silhouetted form of something squat and very wide, a shapeless blob of utterly grotesque horror. A strangely flashing light of a sickly-green colouration began to emanate from the thing as it lumbered, with a terrible wheezing, gasping clamour, directly to-wards me!

*****

Then, when the figure stepped out from the shadow of the tree, I saw that it was a man. Certainly a poor excuse for one, but a male member of the human species nevertheless. He was short and morbidly obese, unkempt and scruffily-bearded, and clad in a T-shirt, cut-off jean shorts, and white sneakers with no socks. The mephitic smell was his sweaty body odour; the strange sound his wheezing at having to do even the small amount of exercise necessary to walk around the grounds. As for the flashing light, its source was the electronic “ghost-box”; one of those ridiculous devices sold on late-night television “infomercials”, in reality just a radio scanner set on constant loop so that would-be paranormalists could pretend that the resultant white noise and voice bits were actually spirits talking to them.

“Hey,” he said, with a noticeable hillbilly drawl, “ain’t you that Roman Nose guy?”

“Rumanos,” I replied. “Dr. Daniel Rumanos.”

“Well, I’m Gary Lee Weigert,” he said, as if I should be impressed, “from the WPRT -- Wheelersburg Paranormal Response Team.”

I had indeed heard of this person and his West Virginia-based “team”. He had made the news a few years before concerning his membership in a Civil War re-enactment group that was rumoured to have connections with the Ku Klux Klan. He also had, around the same time, been advertising on social media to meet children that he wanted to take with him in order to teach “ghost hunting” in the woods. Now, I do not think that Gary Weigert was really a serious racist or a paedophile. He was just too bloody stupid to realise that such things look inappropriate.

What he was doing here in Amityville was a different matter, since it was rather far removed from his usual redneck stomping-grounds. Apparently, word had leaked out among the idiot want-to-be “paranormal investigator” faddist crowd that there were supposedly actual unexplained phenomena at the location. Weigert, with his pathological need for attention, had hurried here in his ongoing quest for dubious fame.

“All right, Mr. Weigert,” I warned him. “Understand that I am here at the specific behest of the current homeowners.”

“Call me Gary, Dan,” he replied.

“Call me Dr. Rumanos, Gary”

I decided this plebeian fool was harmless enough, at least under my supervision. I walked to-wards the front door of the house, with him trailing along behind. Mr. Weigert was so corpulent that he had to walk and stand with his thick legs spread far apart, making him appear several inches shorter than even his actual 5’8” height. In his delusional way, he liked to refer to this as his “power stance”.

Weigert continued rambling on as we approached the house.

“They gonna be puttin’ me on a TV show soon,” he said between gasping breaths. “I’ll be sellin’ autographed pictures and everything! They’re teamin’ me up with this hot psychic chick to explore the most haunted town in West Vir… I mean in America! The show is called Spirits of Sh…”

“Please do at least attempt to be quiet, Weigert,” I interrupted him, having no interest in his silly boasting. “I am endeavouring to conduct an investigation here.”

“I know you are, Dan,” he went on ridiculously. “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

I took out the key that had been given me and unlocked the door to the infamous “Amityville Horror” house. It was indeed somewhat of a disappointment that it did not even creak as it opened.

I entered the home, with Weigert still groaning behind me. We found ourselves in the large foyer of the old house, with a stairway to the second storey off to the side of it.

Suddenly, from the top of the stairway was heard an hideous howling, wailing noise -- this time most definitely an otherworldly sound.

“What’s up them stairs?!” shouted Gary Weigert in evident terror. “Sounds like they gonna knock holes in the ceiling!”

Then, with astonishing quickness came drifting down the stairway an huge black conglomeration of unholy, eldritch demoniacal spirits of a type I knew only too well.

They were Cacodemons!!

*****

The Cacodemons are the now-disembodied essences of the one-time rulers of the Andromeda Galaxy. They were defeated and banished to an inter-dimensional prison countless aeons ago by my people, the Watchers of Algol, and do indeed make up a large portion of what human beings generally refer to as “demons” or “evil spirits”. They sometimes manage to escape from their confinement in the regions known as Gehenna, attracted by suffering, pain, and other negative emotions and actions.

“Oh my Gawd!” exclaimed Gary Lee Weigert, his dull eyes nearly popping out of his low-browed head as the ebony-black amassment of phantasmagorical Cacodemons quickly floated down the stairs. “It’s some pissed-off ghosts!”

Weigert then turned and fled from the house as fast as his fat legs would carry him. I soon heard the sound of his pick-up truck starting up and racing away from the property. His “ghost-box”, which he had dropped from his trembling hands in his haste to leave, now lay smashed to numerous pieces on the floor.

I stood tall and unmoved before the rushing onslaught of demoniacal entities, there in that domicile that had been the supposed scene of the notorious “Amityville Horror”. The inky-dark mass of absolute spiritual madness was rushing directly to-wards me.

At the final moment before the hideously phantasmal conglomeration of Cacodemons would have reached me, I raised my right hand and made a sign of banishing whilst intoning the ancient words of exorcism:

“APO PANTOS CACODEMONOS! APO PANTOS CACODEMONOS! APO PANTOS CACODEMONOS! Depart from me, all evil spirits, in the name of YEHASHUA YEHOVASHAH! I, Lord Rumanos of Algol, by the awesome and puissant powers of my most noble heritage, do command you!!”

“Rumanos!” darkly screamed the Cacodemons. “Rumanos! Rumanos! Have you come to torture us before the time? We are here by right of summoning for punishment; by the pain of a conscience of the Earthling-kind!”

It then started to dawn on me what might actually be occurring there at the Amityville house -- what true suffering and “punishment” the Cacodemons felt they had the right to inflict. However, I knew that I had to complete the banishment of them before I could proceed in unveiling the mystery.

“Be gone, foul ones!” I ordered. “By the supremacy of the Daemon-Star I do compel you to depart now, and to commit no harm to anyone!”

And with one final bellow of horrendous, horrific fury, the grotesque accumulation of Cacodemons vanished from the dwelling.

It was then, as soon as the echoes of the obscenely demoniacal horrors had died away from the stairway, that another phantom figure began to drift slowly down it. The form was nearly transparent, but of the size and shape of a human being; indeed of an elderly gentleman of medium height and build, with a strong yet sad countenance, apparently dressed in the style of a few decades previous to the contemporary era.

As this apparition approached, looking for all the world like the classic ghost of so many cheap pulp fiction tales of occult, supernatural, and paranormal thrills, I noticed something else about it. The face of this man looked familiar. It was not someone whom I had met before, but it was nonetheless recognisable. It was a face I had seen in book illustrations, in old news reports, and in documentary films.

“Hello, Dr. Rumanos,” he said to me, his voice betraying a distinct New England accent. “I am so pleased that you are here. You may be the only person in this world who can help me.”

“I shall certainly attempt my best to do so, sir,” said I, still attempting to definitely place the visage -- though I had my suspicions. “But it appears you have me at a disadvantage. I do not believe we have been introduced.”

“Of course,” replied the ghost politely. “Sorry to say we never met when I was alive. I am… I was… Ed Warren.”

*****

I basically knew the behind-the scenes story of Ed Warren from my various connections in the occult underground. A self-educated “demonologist” from Monroe, Connecticut, he had become quite well-known over the years due to his various investigations of supposed demonic hauntings, most often in the company of his wife, herself a professed “psychic sensitive”.

That the Warrens had originally been quite absolutely sincere was indeed very likely; being traditional Roman Catholics by background, the concept of demonic possession and exorcism was a part of their faith. However, as fame and renown continued to come their way, the urge from the public to constantly produce increasingly amazing things from their work became too much for them and, as is the case with so very many proclaimed “paranormal investigators”, they started to exaggerate, and eventually turned to outright fraud and fakery.

The stories the Warrens continued to tell of demon possession cases were augmented with increasingly fictional tales of satanically-desecrated cemeteries, demonic dolls, werewolf accounts, and other charlatanry. The Warrens attempted to justify this to themselves by thinking that it would keep the public attuned to their core message of the fight against spiritual evil, but eventually the strain got to Ed Warren, who realised he had become the very type of exploitative occult con-artist that he should have been working to expose. Mrs. Warren, on the other hand, descended further and further into self-delusion, in time even refusing to leave their house for fear of “demonic attachments”.

When Ed Warren eventually passed away, his spirit had remained earthbound due to his guilt at having deceived the public in what he had originally perceived as a sacred mission. His feelings of self-reproach could have indeed inadvertently summoned the Cacodemons, which had hoped to drag his spirit into Perdition, where they feed on the sufferings of the damned.

That Mr. Warren’s ghostly essence had eventually become entrapped in the Amityville house was then no great surprise. The exceedingly famous Amityville situation had been by far the most well-known of the cases in which the Warrens had been involved, though their connection with it had indeed been only peripheral and after-the-fact. They had, for instance, never actually even met a member of the Lutz family and had not at first known of the intentional deceptions involved in the whole debacle. When the “Amityville Horror” was publicly exposed as a hoax, the Warrens were left in the bizarre position of having to defend something with which they had connected their name without actually having any authentic knowledge of it!

“Mr. Warren!” I said to the phantom. “It is interesting to meet you under any circumstances.”

“Please call me Ed, Dr. Rumanos,” the spirit replied.

“Call me Daniel then, Ed.”

“Can you… I mean, will you… free me from this curse?” he woefully implored. “I am truly sorry for having deceived the public. I only wished to do well -- to do the Lord’s work.”

“My holy words of banishing have already closed the Hell-Gates in this house,” I assured him. “You can now pass on to the other side by your own will. I cannot reveal to you what your rewards may be, but I can promise you that eternal damnation is not among them.”

“Thank you, Daniel. Thank you so much.”

“Oh, before you go, Ed,” I enquired of him. “Do you wish that I should inform your widow of these things?”

“Oh, that crazy old bat?” rejoined the ghostly spirit of Ed Warren, showing a definite hint of intelligent humour as he faded from view. “I really would prefer that you did not!”